MovieChat Forums > Sherrybaby (2007) Discussion > Why was she drinking????

Why was she drinking????


Sherry was drinking at the table with the rest of the family. Hello, when you are an addict, you are an addict. Especially if you truly believe in the 12 steps which say "a drug is a drug is a drug..."
I think that was the beginning of her relapse personally, and her entire family was condoning it, even encouraging her by pouring her a glass.

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She wasn't an alcoholic, she was a drug addict. Just because you're addicted to one drug doesn't mean you're addicted to all drugs.

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[deleted]

I thought she was drinking soda...was i wrong?

~But that's just me~

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In the beginning they said she had BOTH a drug and alcohol problem.

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Also, she stopped at a liquor store and bought a beer when she went to visit the Native American guy from the 12-step program.

Even if she's not addicted to alochol, it could be a gateway back. Also, supervised release requirements (parole or release pending trial) include not using drugs or alcohol at all. So she could have screwed up her probation.

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okay I just got finish watching Sherrybaby the scene were she has drink in a paperbag has to be soda who drinks beer with a straw?

HALLOWEEN IN THEATHERS AUGUST 31

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Its illegal to drink on the street, she did it to hide what she was drinking

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oh okay thanks

HALLOWEEN IN THEATHERS AUGUST 31

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I used to.To keep from smearing my lipstick on the beer can. I swear to god.

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Classy! ;-)

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I am not much of a beer drinker, but I have been known to drink beer through a straw. It is the belief of some people that the alcohol from beer "hits quicker" when it is consumed through a straw.

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Danny Trejo is about as Mexican as you can get w/o talking like Speedy Gonzales.

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lol im 22. im an addict. a true addicted person will indulge in whatever is there. alcohol fueled my addiction from the start and it will be there until the end. sad really, thats its legal and pot is not. our country needs to get its head out of its blinded ass!!!

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"She wasn't an alcoholic, she was a drug addict. Just because you're addicted to one drug doesn't mean you're addicted to all drugs."

Alcohol is a drug.

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If you are on the programme you are not meant to drink alcohol. An addict is an addict. At the lunch, The camera focused on Shelly everytime she took a sip and at first she looked a bit guilty (as if she knew that she was not meant to be drinking.) I think that first drink and the subsequent drinking is what triggered her relaps. Also, the family probably didn't know you aren't meant to drink when you are in NA (like many other on this board) so I didn't mean any harm when they were encouraging her to drink.

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Thank you! My point exactly.

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I picked up that alcohol was the gateway drug to her relapse. She knew she shouldn't have had that beer, thats why she looked guilty. Then if you noticed the drinks got stronger until she went back to herrione.

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I just watched the film, and when I saw that scene I didn't understand why she was drinking. You're not suppose to drink at all, or do any kind of drugs. I got an MIP a year ago and it was a violation of my probation to even drink (even though I turned 21 during that time).

Maybe it was Odouls or something, lol...it has .5% alocohol and is for people that need to watch the alcohol content they drink. I didn't see what they were actually drinking, and the mother says something about wine, but I wasn't sure if she was drinking it or not.

Obviously she was drinking a beer or something on the street, as it showed her drinking later, showed the liquor sign at the store she went to, and you can't just walk around with alcohol (mentioned already), which is why she had it in the bag and hid the other one in her purse.

I don't know, just a stupid thing to me...maybe it was to forshadow that she'd relapse and was a dumbass.

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id drink too if my family was trying to turn my own daughter against me. the family were completely ignorant and probably werent even thinking about Sherry as they all had a drink and she decided to drink to cover her pain. Thats what i got from the scene anyway.

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It is astounding how dense many people are! A drink did NOT "trigger her relapse!" Sherry's environment, adjusting to life outside of prison or a sober living house, conflict within herself and the people around her, the trauma of the sexual abuse that she endured....ALL OF THIS and much more is what caused Sherry to relapse.

In fact, Sherry did not begin to truly recover until the end of the film. Prison can get a person "clean," but rehabilitation is rare. The reality was that she was ill-equipped to deal with being a mother, a sister, a friend and a productive member of society. This realization washed over her during the scene when Sherry was changing her daughter's soiled clothes. When she returned her daughter to her brother and drove away...*THAT* is when Sherry began her road to recovery.

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It's been a while since I watched the movie, but if I remember correctly, her dad poured her that first drink when they all sat down at the table together. That seems to make a big statement to me. He seemed to do a lot of drinking himself, and looked pretty well lit when he was groping Sherry later in the movie. If you didn't catch on to the sad dynamics between her and her father ("Daddy I got my GED", kissing him on the mouth and hugging him but him not wanting the rest of the family to see, the fact that she wanted to please him), she was obviously molested as a child. Sherry's problem was the situation she was brought up in and the people around her, drugs and alcohol were really only secondary to that. Her own family were the ones keeping her down, except maybe for her brother. Dean, a former addict himself and her parole officer were the only ones who tried to help her.

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If you believe that alcoholism and drug addiction are diseases, you'll disregard those aspects and keep on believing that the reason you abuse drugs is to be found in the drug itself. Then it's easy to blame that first drink. If you understand that alcoholism and addiction are symptoms of a dysfunctional life and a lack of a supportive network, you'll be able to see that Sherry started drinking because she had to face a world that didn't believe in her, treated her as a criminal and didn't give her a chance. She had gotten clean and she had great hopes for herself - she was going to take care of her daughter, get a job and have a normal life. The world around her didn't share those hopes.

That is one of the hardest part about being a former addict, that you'll have to constantly demonstrate to other people that you're a stable person and not a bomb, ready to go off the minute something goes wrong. This constant distrust from the people around you is not what you need when trying to stay sober, but it is something you need to be able to handle if you're going to stay clean. Because it really never ends.

I'm a former heroin addict and I've been clean for more than 7 years. I was a kid back then and I don't even remember what heroin feels like, why and how I quit, or how that felt. People still ask me how I manage to stay clean and I just want to ask them the same thing because I'm not an addict anymore. I have a life now, a great life with a happy child, a wonderful partner, a career, a home. I don't have a reason to do heroin. I did before. There's this weird notion in society that heroin addiction is so special and complicated and life-consuming - you'll never forget that high, you'll always have to fight the urge to use, being clean from heroin is a hard, daily struggle. I seriously cannot answer those questions honestly because people think that I'm on the verge to a relapse because I don't do some kind of daily, active efforts to stay clean. I just don't do drugs and it's that simple.

For all of the people who think that the drug is the issue and that an addict will relapse on their drug-of-choice because they do some other drugs (alcohol or weed usually): I can have a drink, even though I don't much like alcohol. I can have a spliff every now and then. Hell, I can even have a high dose or morphine (post-op). NA claims that having a drink or a spliff will lead to death and that kind of thinking will turn into a self-fulfilling prohpecy. Yes, when a twelve-stepper relapses, they relapse really, really badly. Because they believe that they *beep* everything up by that first sip of beer. And if you believe that you've *beep* everything up and you're going to die because of your flaws, you have a very, very good reason to do drugs.

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I agree, it bothered me throughout. When you are an addict in recovery you omit all addictive substances, no matter what your particular drug of choice was. She should not have been drinking alcohol in recovery, and she appeared to know it, but her family apparently did not.

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she was still struggling with addiction. you are not supposed to drink when you get sober for anything drugs or alcohol, but people do, because they think they can handle it, although it makes them more prone to relapse.

i think it made the movie more realistic, considering how much she struggled and the fact that she relapsed as well.

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I think the dirty dad probably encouraged the drinking because gosh forbid she got straight and credible and was able to finger him as the culprit of sexual abuse. He seemed to get anxious when she was tense or upset - first he gives her a drink to derail/diffuse - then eventually the abuse is revealed when she is breaking down about her relationship with her daughter - he moves onto something more insidious than offering her a drink to quiet and coddle her.

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Many addicts adhere to the teetotaler tenets of most sobriety programs but I have known many recovering addicts who were on hardcore drugs (crack, meth, etc) yet were never big drinkers in the first place and now see nothing wrong with the occasional beer or mixed drink here and there. It's certainly frowned upon in certain circles within the sober community, however not everyone feels the same.

Yes alcohol is a drug, but so is nicotine and walk past any AA meeting and see how many smokers you can spot. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting at least a handful.

__________
Everybody needs love. Have you held your hostage today?

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I'm not sure about America but in Australia, if you're on parol and getting drug screened, drinking is also a no go. But in saying that, the drinking wasn't the cause of her relapse. I mean, did everyone here miss her father feeling her up???? It was obvious from the first time he walked in that their relationship was all kinds of weird then it was confirmed at her daughters party. She only used after that happened. Her abuse is what she needs to work on and that scum father needs to be in jail.

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Not to mention if you are on parol/probation, drinking is prohibited and abstaining from alcohol is part of your conditions of release.

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